Weekly Roundup: ‘Hope is on the move,’ the battle over smart cities and China’s ‘ant tribes’

-“Hope is on the move,” reports The Economist. Optimism no longer defines Western culture, with 87 percent of Chinese saying their country is moving in the right direction, vs. just 31 percent of Britons. We looked at hope-fueled vs. fear-fueled markets in an AnxietyIndex Quarterly last year. (Click here to download.)

-Nielsen released a study on mobile phone ownership among youth around the world. Fast Company highlights two tidbits: Italy has the highest smartphone penetration among youth, and smartphone users skew male, except in the U.S.

-eMarketer forecasts that tablet sales will exceed 81 million units worldwide in 2012.

-Ad Agelooks at how Latin American entrepreneurs have localized the Groupon model for “consumers who don’t like to plan ahead.”

-BusinessWeek looks at Daimler’s car2go service and the trend toward car sharing over owning. And Paris’ mayor announces details of a city-wide electric-car-sharing program to debut next August.

-In China, a steep rise in college graduates is outpacing the supply of good professional jobs, leading to an “ant tribe” of educated young job seekers, reports The New York Times.The Times also examines how the recession has prompted a rise in entrepreneurship among young American graduates.

-The Pew Research Center examines how different generational cohorts access and use the Internet; certain activities, like seeking health information and purchasing products, are becoming “more uniformly popular across all age groups.”

-How are Americans dividing up their media time? TechCrunch parses a recent eMarketer report and finds that adults spend as much time on mobile devices as they do reading print magazines and newspapers. And a Forrester survey finds the average American is spending as much time online as watching TV.

-We recently released our sixth annual forecast of key trends that will shape or significantly impact consumer behavior in the year ahead. To see what’s on tap for 2011, read more about the report here or watch a two-minute teaser video that gives a quick rundown of our forecast.

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Things to Watch

A new Swedish startup is combating food waste with leftover fruit. FoPo takes nearly rotten fruit and turns it into a dry powder with a shelf life two years longer than normal fruit. The powder is being trialed in the Philippines as a way to provide disaster relief, as well as jobs, for poor communities.

Five hundred budding entrepreneurs have staged a weekend takeover of The Old Truman Brewery in London to launch Supa Market, the United Kingdom’s first youth-led pop-up market. The event enabled participants to “earn while they learned” about the retail industry.

Vice is gearing up to launch its newest vertical—Broadly, a women’s news and interest channel “for women who know their place.” The channel will cover “Sex, politics, culture, witchcraft. Women’s news you thought would exist by now.”

The online television series An African City, launched in 2014, is catching on worldwide with its depiction of five young, affluent women who have returned to Ghana after completing their studies in Western metropolises. Nicknamed the “African Sex and the City,” the show reveals a side of Africa that mainstream media rarely portrays.

Beme is a new app that takes a “ruggedly simple” approach to social sharing. Launched last week by YouTube celebrity Casey Neistat, the app lets users share raw experiences by taking away the filtering and editing that come with most social platforms.

A new brand called Abstract_ aims to give people ultra-customized looks based on their emotions. Danish designers Julie Helles Eriksen, Bjorn Karmann and Kristine Boesen have developed a way to use facial recognition technology to translate emotions into textile patterns, which customers can arrange onto various looks.

There is a small army of refrigerators waging war on discarded leftovers in Spain. From Galdakao, near Bilbao, a grassroots initiative dubbed the “solidarity fridge” provides a place for locals to share and recycle leftovers, in a nod to the growing demand for action on food waste.

Amy’s Kitchen, known for its vegetarian frozen-food products, plans to open up its first fast-food spot, Amy’s Drive Thru, later this year. Located just north of San Francisco, the restaurant will offer a new take on fast food, serving exclusively vegetarian and 95% organic items.